


sneak preview

by moonjuicewiththepresident



Series: tma [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Circus, Clowns, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders Needs a Hug, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Scary Clowns, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, the magnus archives stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-23 03:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonjuicewiththepresident/pseuds/moonjuicewiththepresident
Summary: On each, there was a clown, the same clown. Dark hair, vertical on the top of his head, face shockingly white, scarlet lips painted in a wide, pointed smile, a crimson diamond running down each cheek from just below his eyes. The lips may have been smiling, but the mouth Roman had drawn was dark, an empty circle that made Remus’ skin crawl.
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders
Series: tma [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707199
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	sneak preview

Roman was always better than Remus.

He was a couple of years younger, but by the time he’d hit 21, he was already taller, fitter, better looking. Of course, he didn’t have Remus’ award-winning sense of humor, but he never needed it. Charisma was more of his route.

A lot of people in Remus’ situation would have been jealous, but not him. He was always so proud of Roman. He was always doing some charity race or getting modeling gigs, while Remus worked quietly on his book.

They didn’t really talk a lot. They were still pretty close, and Roman would keep Remus updated on whatever his latest obsession was. Roman tended to throw himself into a thing that lasted about six months and then he would get bored until something new caught his eye. His most recent obsession was urban exploration. He’d come down to London, stay with Remus for a couple of days and they’d end up having drinks with Dee, an old friend of theirs from back in college.

Dee had been doing the urban exploration thing on and off for a couple of years and was telling us about one of his ‘close calls’ in some site down near the old Docklands. As he talked, Remus was just watching Roman’s eyes light up, and he knew exactly what was happening. Roman’s passion for sailing had started to wane after almost a year, and Remus was sure that he was watching him discover his next project. When Dee mentioned he had a trip lined up for the old Millennium Mills in Newham, it was a done deal. At the time Remus had liked the idea. It wasn’t the weirdest thing to ever catch Roman’s attention, not by a long shot, and secretly Remus thought Roman and Dee would maybe make kind of a cute couple, so he was quite encouraging. Not that he needed it.

It’s weird though, the things that can change your life. You can plan for all the devastating, terrible possibilities you can imagine, and it will always be those tiny, unexpected things that get you. The things you never noticed as they were happening, just nudging everything into motion. But even if there was a way Remus could have known, he didn’t think he could have stopped him.

For the next few months, that was it. Remus’ cool little brother was an urban explorer. It suited him, and Remus got used to his phone buzzing constantly as Roman sent pictures of himself in front of rusted old machines or hidden tunnels. He never did get together with Dee, but it only took a couple of trips with him, and he’d learn what he needed. Remus thought he’d be down in London more than he was, but it turns out there are even more interesting abandoned places up north, and they tended to be less guarded than they are down there, so that was where he spent most of his time.

There was one thing that did draw him down to London though, what he referred to as “ghost buildings”. That might have been some official name in the urban exploration community or something. Roman had stopped using the jargon around him after Remus joked that ‘urbex’ sounded like a drain cleaner. What he was talking about was the places where newer buildings had been constructed in or over the remains of an earlier one, but development had left some of the old pieces intact. Sometimes, it was just a wall or two, made out of a different material, but occasionally there would be an entire hidden basement or boarded-up room. Remus didn’t know why, but Roman loved them. He would talk for hours about “crumbling pieces of history desperately clinging onto existence”, but to be honest, Remus never really got it. According to him, London had more of those ‘ghost buildings’ than anywhere else in the country.

Roman had been exploring for a few months when he first mentioned Covent Garden Theater. It had been destroyed by fires twice since it was first built, and, well, he was convinced that the current building stood on top of floors and floors of hidden and abandoned ruins, “the discarded cocoons of its previous life” as he once put it. He showed Remus maps and measurements, a few photo sets from others who’d apparently been there before. Remus never asked him to, but when he was excited, he wanted to show everyone else to share it.

All through this, Remus was trying to talk him out of going because what had once been the Covent Garden Theater was now known as the Royal Opera House, which was about as far from an abandoned building as you can get. He didn’t think that trespassing there would be a good idea. But Roman didn’t want to hear it. He wasn’t going into the main building, he told Remus, and had figured out a route he claimed would lead him into the abandoned levels below without crossing any security. And he was going to go alone, so he didn’t have to worry about attracting too much attention. Remus told him it was a bad idea, but he’d never been able to stand in the way of Roman’s confidence.

Remus didn’t know how long he was gone. He went to bed around one in the morning, and Roman hadn’t gotten back. It was a hot night, and Remus woke up a few hours later needing a glass of water. There were the first hints of dawn filtering in through his living room windows, giving it this quiet, otherworldly feeling. Roman was sat in his big armchair, completely still. Remus smiled, feeling suddenly a little bit unsettled and trying his best to hide it.

“How’d it go?” Remus tried to ask, but Roman didn’t answer. “Did you find anything?”

He nodded slowly and tilted his head, showing his cheeks were wet with tears. He mumbled something then, very quietly and Remus couldn’t really make it out, but it sounded like the name Joey.

It was sort of surreal, strange, and Remus thought he might have been dreaming, but he’d never seen Roman cry before. He’d tried to talk to him, find out what was wrong, but he just kept shaking his head. They sat in silence for a very long time.

Remus didn’t know what to do; the situation was so strange. He thought maybe he could try and get Roman to rest, let him collect himself, so after some coaxing, he got him onto the couch. As he laid down, Remus could hear him say something else. He thought it sounded like “the show must go on”, and at the time, he’d thought that it actually was a good sign. He watched for a few more minutes until Roman was asleep, and then went back to bed, though it was a while before he fell back asleep.

That night was the last sign he ever saw Roman. When he woke up a few hours later, he was gone. He left no note, no hint of where he might have gone, and the only thing that showed he’d been back at all were a small pile of sketches he’d drawn on some scrap paper from Remus’ printer. On each, there was a clown, the same clown. Dark hair, vertical on the top of his head, face shockingly white, scarlet lips painted in a wide, pointed smile, a crimson diamond running down each cheek from just below his eyes. The lips may have been smiling, but the mouth Roman had drawn was dark, an empty circle that made Remus’ skin crawl.

He should have called the police. He shouldn’t have followed him. He shouldn’t have checked the notes Roman left about where to get in, and what to watch out for en route. There was never really any hope for him, though. This is how it was always going to go.

Roman’s notes were very comprehensive and finding the entrance to the old, disused part under the Royal Opera House wasn’t nearly as difficult as Remus thought it might’ve been. He hadn’t reattached the chain he’d broken to get in, and it didn’t look like anyone had noticed to replace it. The entrance stood open, and even though it was the middle of the day, it became almost completely dark as soon as it crossed the threshold. Roman must have done some work on the hinges too because even though there was rust eating through them, the door moved in complete silence. Remus stepped inside.

The corridors were wide and solid, and his flashlight showed columns that were tall and arching. Compared to the summer heat, the air was cold. He found himself shivering in just his t-shirt and shorts. The whole place looked spotless, a lot cleaner than any pictures Roman had shown him of urban exploration or abandoned sites. Remus couldn’t really see why the Royal Opera House above wouldn’t use that space, why they’d just let it sit there untouched and hidden behind a locked and unmarked steel door just off of James Street. He was still wondering about this when he walked into the auditorium.

At the time, Remus wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking at, but it was nearly identical to the pictures of the second Theater Royal in Covent Garden. A perfect recreation of the old stage and tiered seats, the decorations and the boxes. There were only two differences: that it was almost twenty feet below the ground where the original stage was, and that everything, from the floor to the seats to the blank and faceless audience was entirely carved out of stone. There was no light except for the headlamp Remus had taken out of his brother’s pack, and it swept over a full house, four levels of unmoving stone watchers, two thumb-sized indentations focused towards the stage. There was nothing that indicated they were any newer than the rest of the place.

Remus walked down the steps to the edge of the top-level, where he’d entered, and looked down towards the stage. His headlamp barely illuminated the single figure that stood on it.

It was Roman.

At least, he thought it was. It looked like him; the same hair, the same clothes, but there was something not right about how he looked. Like he was smaller, somehow, slightly folded in on himself. It didn’t matter.

“Roman!” Remus shouted down to him, to let him know he was there. Roman didn’t look up, but when his voice echoed around the stone theater, Remus knew he’d made a horrible mistake.

From somewhere above him, a spotlight suddenly turned on, shining, down onto the stage, painfully bright against the white stone. The air was uncomfortably hot, and there was some sort of music. The spotlight wasn’t on Roman. Instead, it picked out a figure crouched in the corner. All ruffles, and polka dots, and tights. It crouched and contorted in the corner, hands backward over its face, but not so much that he couldn’t see the dark red patterns that seemed to flow down its eyes. He couldn’t move.

Slowly, so slowly, its right arm reached out towards Roman. It placed its hand on the floor with a long, low groan, then pulled itself along the floor, the fabric of its colorful dress scraping against the stone of the stage, and its cheek rubbing against the ground, leaving a trail of red behind it. Then it was still for a second, before a leg reached out in front, and it began to drag the rest of the clown behind it.

The clown reached his brother, who still hadn’t moved an inch, and unfurled to its full height. The red on the cheeks was clearly blood, and something black oozed down from its shock of hair. It took Roman by the hand and looked up.

“Shall I?” He asked, voice full of playful mischief that Remus felt bile rise in his throat. He wanted to shake his head no, say no, but he never got the chance.

With a single, smooth motion, like whipping the tablecloth off in a restaurant, he pulled the skin off of whatever had been pretending it was Remus’ brother. It was like an impressionist painting of a dancer, all colors and shapes that made you feel movement you couldn’t see. Silently, imperceptibly, moving from one position to another. The music had stopped and the dance was silent.

The next thing Remus remembered was the cool night air on his face, as the opera house patrons pushed past him to get into the evening performance of Tosca. In his hands, he held an old black and white circus flyer. It was written all over in Norwegian, but in the bottom left corner was a certain clown’s face, leering out at him, billed as the guest performer. As he watched, it crumbled to ash and floated away on the breeze.

Remus never went back to the auditorium. He missed Roman and wanted to find him, but he didn’t think that they’d let him leave a second time.


End file.
